


Sam Writes a Fanfiction: A Fanfiction about Fanfiction

by KidAbsurdity



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Writing & Publishing, Bad Writing, Comedy, Fanfiction, Inspired By Tumblr, Inspired by Art, Inspired by Fanfiction, Meta, Parody, Repetition, Repetitiveness, Running Gags, Solarion Chronicles, Writing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-08-15 06:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8046565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KidAbsurdity/pseuds/KidAbsurdity
Summary: After a riveting game of Solarion Chronicles, Sam decides to write his first fanfiction, about the game!





	1. The World-Building is Not Enough

##  **Sam Writes A Fanfiction: A Fanfiction About Fanfiction**

 

### Chapter 1 - The World-Building is Not Enough

 

One Saturday night, after a riveting two-player game of _Solarion Chronicles_ at Sebastian’s house, Sam was left feeling unsatisfied. He wasn’t _dissatisfied_ , he had just had a game session that was, by his standards, excellent - but there was an itch in the back of his mind that he couldn’t quite identify, and he couldn’t scratch it until he did. He walked down from the mountains past the run-down community centre and the trailer where Penny and Pam lived. He missed when Penny would be able to play with them, before Saturday nights became about preparing lessons for Vincent and Jas, and cleaning up the trailer so that Pam wouldn’t be abusive, and later on in the night, making sure she didn’t drown in her own puke. While it would have been nice if Penny could join them, Sam knew that that wasn’t the cause of his disquieted un-satisfaction.

 

He cut past the saloon, but he rarely walked in those days. His friends either avoided the place, like Penny, or went on Fridays, and he wasn’t as much in the mood to socialize after the intense interaction that tabletop role-playing provided. Also, he worked stocking shelves at Joja Mart and didn’t exactly have fat stacks of gangstadollahs (G) to burn.

 

He wanted more. More of that sweet storytelling action. One night a week of gaming wasn’t enough for all of the ideas in his head about the Solarion Chronicles universe, and all of its multiverse variations: _Solarion Chronicles: Crowspook_ , the gothic horror Solarion Chronicle, or the more medieval-fantasy _Solarion Chronicles: Greycrow_ , The developers of Solarion Chronicles really liked crows, for some reason. He imagined that the new local farmer would not like the developers of _Solarion Chronicles_ very much. Not all of their game lines featured crows, though, so maybe the farmer could tolerate the _Solarion Chronicles: Swellslammer_ and its devs, it being a game about piloting magical spaceships into the ethereal void of the astral planes in search of heretofore undiscovered life to kill and loot.

 

Sam did not fancy himself a game designer, so designing a new Solarion Chronicles setting was out of the question. A new campaign for him and Sebastian, perhaps? It seemed a lot of work, and Sebastian leaned toward the published adventure modules for that reason. He did like mentally expanding on the content of those adventures, though. An expanded  character motivation here, the backstory of that village where they stopped to buy a thousand feet of rope and an eleven-foot-pole for disarming traps with a ten-foot area-of-effect radius there, that sort of thing. And then it sneak-attack critical- hit him like a level 9 Thief driving a Mack Chariot.

 

Fan-fiction. That was the answer. It was brilliant. _He_ was brilliant. That would be how he would get the creativity and role-playing fixes he so craved. Sebastian was going to love the creativity of it. All he had to do was learn how to write a fanfiction, but he was well-versed in the internet. He had this. After about 25 minutes perusing ArchiveOfFanfiction.com, he was basically convinced that he was hot to trot out his words, but that he’d just need to use the thesaurus for some extra-spicy R-rated synonyms.

 

He opened up his word processor for the first time since his online courses days, and got to work:

 

_It was a dark time, even during the day, when it was also a dark time, if slightly less of a dark time than it was at night.  The land itself cried out for heroes to free it from the darkness and dread emanating from it, though this was frequently misinterpreted as simply being an unseasonal number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The peasants of the land felt the weight of dread upon them, partly because they knew they were oppressed by feudalism, but they couldn’t complain because they had no real rejoinder to the aristocrats telling them “but you’re wearing rags made under feudalism!” The aristocrats were also feeling the weight of dread, but they partly made up for it by oppressing the peasants some more. But the land itself was scarcely concerned about the peasants and the aristocrats alike, for Dread Lord Xarth, the most dreadful of all the Dread Lords, had come to the land with the stolen Solarion Staff, to transmogrify the whole land into a most bleak and dreadful tableau._

 

_But one adventuring wizard knew the land’s cries for what they were, and he gathered his adventuring companions to answer them, even though he might have preferred for the land to leave a message and not have to interrupt his magical research. He was Sebellus, the wizard, whose magical knowledge was matched only by how dumb his face looked. His dumb-looking face led to him acquiring the moniker of “Wizard McDumbface” from the brawns of the adventuring operation,  the warrior Samson, whose face was considerably less dumb, in his estimation, though Wizard McDumbface contested this bitterly. He was bitter about it because he was the one who was called “Wizard McDumbface” everywhere he went, but it was tactically useful because adversaries of the light and good would underestimate his wizardry by assuming him to be as dumb as his face. But for all of their combined might and magical prowess, they would have never made it so far as adventurers without an adept of healing magics to keep the lifeblood of the adventuring party flowing in their bodies after they were shot with arrows or stabbed and the lifeblood of the adventuring party was flowing out of their bodies. That was where Sister Clarissa came in. Once a devout nun of a clerical order of the Goddess of Life, her life was suddenly altered in one of Wizard McDumbface’s freak transmogrification accidents, that turned her head into a cannon capable of firing cannonballs that weigh six pounds, or, even grapeshot and chainshot in naval battles. No one asked where the cannonballs came from, but it was noted that you did not want her to be facing you while yelling. Once, when the adventurers were sneaking into a fortified castle, one of Samson the warrior’s off-colour remarks about the role of women in society provoked her to blast an entrance through the castle wall right into the surprised necromancer’s great hall. “That’s my headcannon,” he quipped, starting both a relationship that he thought he was in but actually wasn’t, as well as giving her a new sobriquet of Sister Headcannon._

  
_These were the heroes who assembled to heed the call of the land and defeat the Dread Lord Xarth’s dreadful machinations._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't make charisma your dump-stat, kids, or you'll wind up like Wizard McDumbface.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam shares his fan-fic with Sebastian. Things get dreadful.

##  **Sam Writes A Fanfiction: A Fanfiction About Fanfiction**

###  Chapter 2 - Dreadful Feedback

 

Sam wrote well into the night and was tired and distracted during his shift at Joja Mart the next day as a consequence. Shane scowled at him even more than usual because he was already a scowly guy and he also had to cover for Sam’s less-than-optimal work. His mind was awhirl with ideas for his fanfiction. At the close of his shift, he cheerfully wished Shane and Morris a good night, with neither of the recipients of his good wishes really caring much about or for them.

 

His family was surprised when he was quiet at dinner, and the sound of musical instruments or his computer games didn’t issue forth from his room the whole night. His mother, Jodi, was so surprised that she knocked on his bedroom door, and when Sam didn’t answer, she poked her head in to see that he was slaving over the word processor. It was unlike him, but probably a nice change of pace for him, so she let it be.

 

Sam, meanwhile, decided that Dread Lord Xarth needed more backstory besides the fact that his Dread Lord name was something Leah would come up with if she was more of a teen straightedge punk with an over-inflated sense of her artistic merit, I mean, come on, it's practically X-art-X, for real?

 

_ Naturally, Dread Lord Xarth was the most powerful of the Seven Dread Lords, but the way he came by that power was subtle in its dreadfully maddening dread. Each of the Seven Dread Lords possessed a particularly dreadful disposition and mind, both in that they were profoundly evil and unpleasant, as well as possessed by a lingering dread - all of them in great measure, and Xarth more than most. Xarth schemed against the world, and against the lesser Dread Lords who might pose a dreadful threat against him one dreadful night in the future, unless he assured himself that the future would be so dreadful that he would be invulnerable as the whole universe would be his element (which was dread in case that wasn’t dreadfully clear). At one of their every-seven-years meetings of the Dread Council of Dread Lords, Dread Lord Xarth put his dread plan into dread motion. Using powerful mind-magics, fuelled by his inexhaustible dread, he linked the minds of all the Dread Lords together psychically. They would all know of each other’s machinations in advance, so plotting against each other was futile, but given that they were still individual minds, though joined, the combined dread of all seven Dread Lords was too much for any one of those minds, even Xarth’s, the most dreadful of them individually, to bear. Driven mad by dread, the Dread Lords plotted against the world to pull it into a state to match their temperaments, and every seven years, the Dreadly Fleet would sail from Dread Island to annex some new town or province to the Dread Fiefdoms. _

 

Sam’s writing was interrupted by the sudden chime of his instant messaging client. Sebastian was looking for his attention! How wonderful! Sebastian would get much more than that!

 

**_ANGSTFIEND420: Yo, you got some time? Demetrius and Maru were being just dreadful today._ **

 

What were the odds? They were actually pretty high, because Demetrius was bad at relating to people, though Sam didn’t mind Maru very much at all. But Sam knew, just  _ knew _ that he had the perfect distraction for Sebastian.

 

**_NARUTOirl: Need a distraction? Because I have just the thing in mind._ **

**_ANGSTFIEND420: A game of Legendary League?_ **

**_NARUTOirl: Even better._ **

**_ANGSTFIEND420: Dodo 2?_ **

**_NARUTOirl: Nope, better._ **

**_ANGSTFIEND420: Fighting Street 4: Turbo: Arcade Edition: version 20X6?_ **

**_NARUTOirl: Better!_ **

**_ANGSTFIEND420: Raiding in Solarion Chronicles: The MMO?_ **

**_NARUTOirl: You’re getting warmer, but not videogames!_ **

**_ANGSTFIEND420: I haven’t got enough time to play the tabletop game tonight. You know that._ **

**_NARUTOirl: What about reading over a few pages of my wicked sick Solarion Chronicles fan-fiction?_ **

**_ANGSTFIEND420: Come off it. You don’t write fan-fiction._ **

**_NARUTOirl: Until last night. But don’t sweat it. I did all the research I needed._ **

**_ANGSTFIEND420: I’m going to regret this, but send it over._ **

 

Sam transferred Sebastian the file with the giddy anticipation of a virgin about to be touched for the very first time, which in terms of his words he was, and in terms of his sex-having, he also was, which makes it more accurate to refer to it as his sex-wanting, or sex-not-having, and then, while he waited, he thought about his next bit of world-building wordsmithing while browsing the most popular fanfictions on ArchiveOfFanfiction.

 

**_ANGSTFIEND420: Sam, what is this garbage?_ **

**_NARUTOirl: It’s exactly what I said it was, it’s my wicked sick fanfiction. It takes our old Solarion Chronicles adventures, and novelizes them. Bask in how novel they are!_ **

**_ANGSTFIEND420: Yeah, my wizard turning Penny’s cleric’s head into a cannon is pretty damned novel to me._ **

**_NARUTOirl: I thought every fanfiction author had to have a head cannon…_ **

**_ANGSTFIEND420: Where do I even begin to tell you how screwed up this is? Y’know what, nevermind. Can I interrupt your writing so we can play a videogame?_ **

**_NARUTOirl: Sure, man, I’m not going the full Elliott on this._ **

 

Their games of Legendary League was a welcome distraction from Sebastian’s family situation and allowed Sam the opportunity to return to thinking about fiction writing from a refreshed vantage point, and he found the ideas flowing after a very late snack.

 

**_NARUTOirl: Yo, so check this, the Dreadly Fleet, right?_ **

**_ANGSTFIEND420: Sam, it’s 3:30 in the morning, for shit’s sake._ **

**_NARUTO: No, check it, how cool is this, there’s a ship for each of the Dread Lords that is named after one of the seven Dreadly Sins._ **

**_ANGSTFIEND420:  That is a dreadful pun._ **

**_NARUTOirl: EXACTLY._ **

**_ANGSTFIEND420: I hate your writing almost as much as I hate you for sharing your writing right now._ **

**_NARUTOirl: Write now? Don’t mind if I doooooooo!_ **

  
Sebastian was unsure what the hell was going on with his friend, but he knew that when Sam gathered this kind of momentum, he would not be stopped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to ApertureGaming011 for inspiring the Dreadly Fleet with the Gotoro Deathly Fleet in his fic, Experiencing Freedom.


	3. Plot Thickening Agents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam gets inspired with a plotline for his fanfic when he a visits the saloon. Our intrepid heroes visit a Tavern and acquire a quest. New antagonists are revealed and the meaning of words is debated.

Like Dread Lord Xarth before getting confronted by the heroic might of the heroic trio, Sam could not be stopped, except to play videogames, because videogames were almost as kickin’ rad as his kickin’ rad Solarion Chronicles fanfiction. He was thinking about playing a bunch of videogames that evening when he realized that it was Friday and he’d be off to the saloon to gossip with his friends, which was all the better to add a splash of fantasy realism to the heroes stopping in to a tavern to get the latest gossip coming out of the Dread Lands. Life imitated art, which imitated life. He’d have to make a point to tell Leah that. It would  _ blow her mind _ .

He strummed on his guitar, thinking about how he’d improve the story from what happened during their game session, how to give it all that extra embellishment, oomph, and pizzazz, before starting off toward the saloon.

_ The mighty Samson, Sister Headcannon, and Wizard McDumbface, fresh from protecting a village of rice farmers from a dreadful pack of marauding orc bandits, rode their horses down the beaten path to the town of Tahnmur, a charming coastal settlement with more of the luxuries of civilization than fermented rice wine, which always gave Wizard McDumbface the worst hangovers, the lightweight. The town had gotten somewhat used to heavily armed adventurers rolling through on, before, or after their various quests, but that didn’t stop them from gawking – at Samson’s physique, at Sebellus’ dumb face, at Sister Headcannon’s literal cannon for a head. _

It was a short walk to the saloon and all the townsfolk assembled there turned to face the door to see who was walking in, as Sam, all smiles ordered a pizza and beer. How unfortunate that fantasy adventurers had no pizzas, he thought, as he made his way to Leah’s table to tell her about how life imitates art imitates life. Not expecting this to come out of nowhere, she nodded dumbly, but not as dumbly as McDumbface’s dumb face. Scanning the saloon for reference material, he saw the farmer talking with the mayor, and slinked over to hear, to overhear, their conversation. And once he did, the idea firmly rooted in mind, he went to join his friends in the arcade.

_Recognizing our intrepid heroes, the Mayor of Tahnmur quickly invited them to enjoy the town’s hospitality and beseeched them to aid him in the form of a quest! It appeared that agents of the Dread Lords had absconded with the +1 Violet Undertrousers of Authoritarian Power,_ ** _and_** _the Truffle Oil of Anointment, no doubt to use in dread magical rituals (of dread)_.

Sebastian was in the middle of telling Abigail about the fanfic when Sam walked in, whereupon, to spare his feelings, Abigail cut Sebastian off to ask Sam how the fanfiction was coming along. Sam replied that he got inspired just from the visit to the saloon and it hadn’t even been ten minutes yet. The next chapter was going to be wicked sick, and would she like to read it? She politely declined, offering instead to read the finished product so she could understand it in its full context. Sam liked that. It would be disappointing to have to wait to see the final work, unless she was going to provide feedback on the way.

_ Dread Lord Xarth’s agents slunk into the hidden temple of the Dread Lords, hidden in plain sight in the common hall of Tahnmur’s general store. By day, except for Wednesdays, it masqueraded as a shrine to the forest god of goodness, light, and peace of mind; the perfect cover for the night-time, and Wednesday, worship of the dread god of evil, darkness, and dread, benefactor of the Dread Lords, to plot to annex the city into the Dread Fiefdoms. _

_ “We have the +1 Violet Undershorts of Authoritarian Power, and the Truffle Oil of Anointment”, the agents told their dark masters through the magical scrying pool that sat below an altar with a pumpkin on it, “but, um, the Undershorts seem like they haven’t been washed lately. They’re looking kind of crusty.” _

_ “Surely you mean rustic,” said the purple-haired dread priestess of the Dread Lords through telepathy. _

_ “Um, not to question the Dread Lords but I’m pretty sure rustic means something like from a farm.” _

_ “SILENCE, FOOL, now what of the Truffle Oil of Anointment?” she boomed. _

_ “It seems to have anointed a lot of things. It’s only like a third full.” _

_ Even the Dread Lords found that a bit distasteful, but you can’t make a Dread Omelet without anointing the pan in corrupted oil of anointment. “It will have to do,” the dread priestess of the Dread Lords replied, dreading having to touch the things, appropriately enough. _

Sam lost even harder at pool than usual, due to constantly turning over the angles of his story rather than his shots, but it didn’t bother him at all. He was getting inspired now that the heroes had their quest at hand and he had his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE, more Samfiction. I got busy with my main fic, which is not at Ao3, and adult life, but I would like to see this to an end because writing comedy fics is fun.


End file.
